How Postal Services Ate My Day

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My plan for today was to tackle the first of the year accounting. Then late last night I got an email from a customer who pointed out that some shipping options had vanished from our store. All that remained were the very most expensive choices. I’m already indebted to our customers for supporting us, it is not okay with me that postal services eat up their money for no good reason. This discovery was made at 10:30 pm. I made a couple of stabs at solving it, but I was too tired to find my problem solving brain. It became the first thing to tackle in the morning.

Except the first thing every morning is to get kids off to school. I can’t do any business tasks until they are out of the house or they wouldn’t get off to school at all. Half the time this is accomplished by 8 am, which still qualifies as “first thing”. This morning was one of the other half, the mornings where Kiki starts an hour later than the other kids. I frequently have time to get started on business tasks in between the two drop-offs because Kiki is self sufficient. She wasn’t this morning. And Howard needed some things done urgently. And I ran to staples because it made sense, since I was out anyway, to pick up the tax forms that I would need for my accounting. What with one thing and another I arrived at 10 am, which no longer counts as “first thing.”

The problem with the store started because the US Postal Service raised their rates. This is fine. They have every right to increase the price of their services, particularly when I know that they are not very profitable. I like USPS. I want them to stick around. Unfortunately somehow the rate change broke their automated system which is queried by our store. The store software responded by making all the shipping methods for which it could not find data, vanish. The nice folks at Volusion (our store software provider) already had a fix for the issue and I had it in place within minutes of calling customer service. So Yay! Everything works again.

Only there is a third provider in our shipping process. I use Stamps.com to print out our labels and postage from data that I export from Volusion. Stamps.com was also affected by the postal rate increase. I had to download an update before that program would run. I did and then it crashed. I could print international postage just fine, but domestic postage crashed the program every time. I fired off an email to customer support and then took all the logical steps: restart computer. Re-install program. Restart computer again. None of it worked.

I resorted to printing labels on the USPS website, which works great if you have a single label, but is tedious when I need to import addresses and print many labels. At this point I had successfully turned all of the orders into packages, which solved the immediate trouble. However I still had a long-term issue to solve. I ship things every day. I did not want to use the clunky USPS form every day. And it was time to go fetch the children. Which completely fractured my ability to concentrate and problem solve.

During the next 3 hours I looked into Endicia, which is a competitor of Stamps.com. Endicia would introduce some features I like, but also would create some new hurdles. I pondered whether the problem was an inherent instability in my old computer system. There are some errors which chirp at me occasionally and photoshop crashes with frustrating regularity. I thought longingly of just buying a new computer, expensive though that solution would be. In the end I just walked away from the whole problem in a grump.

Thirty minutes ago I got an email from Stamps.com customer support. My problem is a known issue and they’ll happily talk me through a fix over the phone. During regular business hours. Tomorrow. On one hand, I’m relieved because my shipping system is still viable. On the other hand I’m frustrated because this problem is going to spill over into tomorrow. The gripping hand is that I lost a whole day because other people made mistakes and broke my system.

I want my day back.

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A Conversation with Kiki about homework

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Me: We need to have a conversation about homework, but this isn’t going to be one where we plan or schedule anything. It will be a meta conversation about homework.

Kiki: (At first looks cautious and then relieved.) Okay.

Me: I feel like lately you’re up high doing something and I’m running around under you with a net to catch you if you fall. It’s kind of tiring.

Kiki: Thats…a pretty accurate description.

Me: So I’m going to stop running around with the net. I’m going to sit on the sidelines and you can call me out if you need me. I’m happy to help if you need it, but I’m not going to keep track or make you do it.

Kiki: Okay.

Me: Except for math. I’m still going to be in your face about math, because ignoring it to death isn’t going to work. I don’t want to underestimate the power of your loathing of math.

Kiki: (nods) That’s probably wise.

I hope it works. I’m really tired of dreading her homework.

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First day back to routine

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I stared blearily at the clock. 6:30. It was beeping at me. Oh. That’s right, the kids have school. How do I do school mornings again? I was pretty sure it started by me getting out of bed and stopping the beeps. Thus our new year began with me pulling out memories of how to run school mornings which felt crinkled and ages old.

Thus our new year began. I know that technically the year is already three days old, but I never feel like it is the new year until we’ve re-established our routines. I’m not sure we’ve quite succeeded yet, but the creakiness of the morning has given way to an afternoon that has a familiar shape to it.

The first work week of a new year is always gobbled up by accounting and beginning of the year to-do lists. The deluge of book keeping isn’t depressing me this year because I remembered to expect it. This year I’m also trying to settle new habits of thought into my schedule as well. So far it is working, but I still feel like I’m wearing a cloak of these thoughts rather than residing in them as if they were my skin. I’ll get there.

I hit one of the first challenges to my new frame of mind. Kiki is struggling with her class load this year. Instead of stepping up and getting the work done, she has grown to depend upon me organizing and enforcing work. This pattern was necessary last Fall when she was truly drowning. Lately, she has plenty of time but tends to avoid work until I prod her. Then she gets grouchy at me for reminding her that homework exists in the world even if we don’t want it to. Kiki is aware of the illogic of her behavior. She is honestly sorry even while she flops into a heap of “I can’t do it” and waits for me to make her. I feel frustrated with her, but compelled to keep pushing because I can’t let her short-sightedness damage her long-term future. So we run in little codependent circles which do neither of us any good.

This is where my new parenting focus and new thought patterns helped me. I was able to see the pattern and pick apart the errors in my own thinking. My false thought was this: “If I don’t help her, she’ll fail. Then she’ll feel even more helpless and depressed. It will spiral downward from there.” The truth is that Kiki is stronger and smarter than that. She might fail a little, but then she’ll dust herself off and figure it out. Instead of being her safety net and task master, I need to be her resource which she can tap for help at times of her own choosing. I need to be more hands off. Which frightens me. Because she could choose avoidance and depression instead of work and confidence. Finding the right balance is going to be tricky. The good news is that I can share every one of these thoughts with Kiki. I can tell her exactly what I am trying to accomplish. Together we can find the best balance for us both.

Balance, that is what I’m striving for in this new year. Along with it I want to find measures of peace and joy to go along with the feeling of purpose that carries me forward. The year started creakily, but I think we’ll all limber up and make it a good one.

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New Year’s Eve at Chez Tayler

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At 10:30 pm it was just me and the cat. The two teens in our house had scattered for parties with friends. Howard was also out. The younger two were abed and asleep. I was pretty content, particularly when the cat decided that our house needed a vigorous defense against the ravages of hair bands. Only she got embarrassed if I watched her play, so I had to snicker quietly.
11:00 Howard came home. He’d been having fun, but decided that he wanted to come home and be with me.
11:10 Link came tromping through the back yard. He’d also had a great time but said “I decided to spend New Year’s with my family.” The three of us sat down to play a game of Poo, which is a card game about monkeys who fling. (I can now honestly say that I got Howard monkey poo for Christmas.)
11:40 Kiki came in through the front door. She repeated Link almost verbatim “It was fun, but I decided to spend New Year’s with my family.”
So we played Poo until the fireworks let us know that the date stamp had changed over.

I think this counts as a family win.

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New Goals (But not necessarily New Year’s Resolutions)

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In the past 10 days I have had a series of introspective realizations. These thoughts very naturally to the formation of new goals. The little non-conformist voice in my brain says “We can’t make new goals now. It’s New Year’s Eve. Everyone is making new goals.” But I have the goals, and they are exactly what I need at this point in my life. It would be foolish to squelch or delay them out of an impulse to be different. These goals are not things that I will be putting on my To Do list or pushing myself to complete. I can’t complete them, not in the sense that they’ll be done forever. This makes them a very different sort of goal than I am used to making. There will be no progress to track, no self-applied pressure. These goals are merely a little mental sanity check of five things that I will perform each day in an effort to be conscious of the good and enjoyable things in my life.

My five daily things:
1. Read Scriptures/say prayers. I am specifying no particular amount nor am I requiring myself to always ponder deeply. But for at least a few minutes each day I will be present to and address my sources of spiritual direction.

2. Small happy conversations/thoughts. Included in this goal is my plan to have at least one non-business related, happy conversation with Howard each day. It can be very short. Also included is the effort I blogged about recently where I consciously find things currently present in my life which are opposite to my worries.

3. Do something each day to improve my health and physical fitness. I have a format for this which seems to be working. My slide into stress was accompanied by a weight gain. It isn’t much of one, but the reversal of this will do much to help me feel in control of my life.

4. Spend some time each day being a writer. This might be only five minutes where I consciously ponder a plot point. The purpose is to create a space during which I at least glance into my cupboard of writing thoughts.

5. Spend a couple of hours each week working on a project which makes me happy and can not possibly earn us money. Hobbies exist to make life joyful. I haven’t made space for mine in over a year.

If I miss something on the list on an individual day, that’s fine. I have no intention of keeping score. I probably only need the daily mental review of the list long enough to make space for happiness part of my daily life.

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Pondering next year’s calendar

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The calendar lay across half of my kitchen table. Around it were multi-colored pens, my planner, a schedule from the school, and last year’s calendar laid partially across the top. The time for my annual switching of the wall calendar had arrived. All the various notes and plans made for 2011 were dutifully recorded in the color of the family member to which they applied. I stood back and surveyed next year laid out before me. It didn’t look too bad, but there were big events not on the calendar because the dates for them are not yet fixed. Howard and I had a long conversation about this just after Christmas. We mentally juggled book production and release schedules against the fixed commitments on the calendar. Some side projects were approved while many were tossed in the “not this year” file. The resulting plan for next year is busy, but hopefully only crazy in a few spots.

My fingers traced across the calendar as I mentally marked our tentative press and shipping dates for the two books we plan to produce next year. My hand hovered over June and July which look empty on the calendar, but which I know will be full of preparations for GenCon and WorldCon as well as book production. I thought back to a piece from I book I’ve read recently. It talked of an old Jewish man who never made any kind of appointment or plan without speaking the words “God Willing.” For the man this was not a fatalistic prediction that the plan would fail, but rather an acknowledgment that no mortal being is in full control of his life. Many things may happen between now and next week to make a dinner date impossible, he speaks the words so that he will not be angry or frustrated if some other event intervenes.

I press my hand flat against the calendar. I have planned next year. It is a good plan. I have built in more flexibility in the months. I have place space for happiness to dwell in each day. I intend to hold this schedule loosely and not panic when it inevitably has to shift or change. God willing, this is how 2011 will be. If it turns out differently, and it almost certainly will, then I will try to trust that there is a bigger plan with pieces that I can not see.

The calendar now hangs on my wall. I’m ready to proceed.

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Gleek in Flight

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“No, it’s okay. I can do it myself!” Gleek says firmly. The attendant releases his hold on the bungee cord and Gleek proceeds to shift her body to increase her bounce height. She is safely tethered between two poles above a trampoline, but I can see the slight uneasiness in her face. This “sky flight” looked so much easier from the mall floor when she decided to spend five of her precious Christmas dollars. I see her shift in the harness, uncomfortable, but not willing to let that discomfort prevent her from doing the tricks she wants. Bounce by bounce she goes higher until she dares a flip. Her hair flies back to reveal her triumphant grin.

My body moves in sympathy with her bounces, as if I could somehow help from my seat on the bench 20 feet away. I don’t mean to do it, but some part of my brain knows that if she would only shift just so, her bounces would be higher. My muscles flex in a vain attempt to telegraph motion to her. Gleek soars into the air again, flipping, bouncing, only occasionally glancing at me to see if I am watching. This is what she needs from me, a witness to her efforts.

Sometimes Gleek’s motions go wrong, killing the bounce. She jiggles on the ends of her tethers, trying to regain lost momentum. The attendant reaches to help and Gleek waves him away, just as she waves away help both at home and at school. I’d watched this guy with the other kids. He pulled on the bungee and they flew much further than they can get by their own weight. He keeps his hands by his sides and watches as Gleek builds her own bounces. I still my body yet again.

When time is up, she comes back to the ground both glad to be done and wanting more. We gather her purchases and collect her shoes, mall trip complete. Then we head out into the bright world to find a new challenge for me to witness.

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Reorganizing my office, my computer, and my brain

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After a 5 day holiday hiatus, I have resumed my office reorganization project. This time I’m tackling digital files. I need to make space on my primary drive so that I can be working on two Schlock books in parallel. (An amusing coincidence: one of the books will be titled Massively Parallel.) My computer is out of date and needs replacing. This is item number one on the list of Things to Do Once We’ve Opened Pre-orders and Have a Buffer of Money Again. Until then, I shuffle files, burn data to disk, and make dual back-ups on external drives.

On it surface this data shuffling does not seem to do anything to forward my office reorganization, but this reorganization is not only about optimizing my physical space. Even more important than making the things I need easy to find is the mental process of looking at exactly how I work. My work processes have grown in response to necessity, usually in the urgency of the moment. After that I was a bit afraid to mess with a system that was working in the middle of a crisis. (Something always felt like a crisis) Now I am questioning if some of the way I work is helping to create a feeling of crisis where none needs to exist. This is similar to the mental adjustment I’m attempting to make in how I worry about/ trust in my children.

It is time to reorganize, re prioritize, and re-evaluate. I know what my goals are, they haven’t changed any, but my mode of travel needs to improve a lot. The physical organization let me see that mental organization was necessary. The mental organization is helping me see how the physical organization can work even better. In the end I don’t know that I will reach any of my goals more quickly. That’s not the point. The point is to be less tired and more happy as I travel.

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Relaxed day in limbo land

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The week between Christmas and New Years is always a sort of limbo. All the big events of the holiday season are complete, but we can’t yet return to normal because the kids are still out of school. Add to that the fact that the holiday provided me with space to unpack and reorganize all my thoughts. I now have plans I want to implement, but they need to be built into “normal” and so must wait for normal to arrive before I can fully see if they will work.

Despite being in limbo, today was a good day. It was not as focused as I’d hoped it would be, but I still got all of the necessary tasks done. The kids played more video games than I probably should have allowed. Perhaps tomorrow I will require more cleaning.

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Seeking bright things instead of dark

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For months now I have been swimming in fear. Or perhaps a better description would be wallowing in worry, because swimming implies movement and possibly gracefulness. I don’t feel like I’ve moved at all. I’m still stuck in the same emotional morass. Some of the worries have revolved around business or financial fears, but mostly I have worried over the children. These worries have worn tracks in my brain so deep that it is hard for me to believe that my kids could travel by any other path than the one I fear most. Then I spend emotional energy trying to figure out how I can heave them out of this dangerous path. I’ve also spent time feeling guilty because I’ve been more worried about one child than another, as if the lack of worry somehow demonstrated a lack of love.

I’m tired of wallowing. I want to wash off and do something else with my mental energies. I’ve devised a means by which I can consciously re-train my mind into new habits. I intend to spend some focused time each day thinking of qualities that my children already possess which are opposite of my fears for them. (The “already posses” is critical here. This is not about me creating, but about me recognizing.) I will try to find specific actions made by the child within the prior 24 hours which demonstrate those qualities. For example: If I worry that a child will cave to negative peer pressure and bullying, I will counter the fear by remembering the rainbow socks she wore even though some other kids thought they were odd. I will follow that up by remembering how my daughter did not care about other opinions because the socks made her happy.

This process will teach me to look for and witness the bright, wonderful, and strong things about each of my children. It will teach me why I don’t need to be so worried. A natural effect of me noticing the good qualities will be that I react more to the good things. This isn’t part of my conscious and careful plan, I always react to what I see, I just intend to notice different things. I believe that my increased response to positive things will in turn have an effect on my kids. Children thrive on attention and response. They instinctively increase behaviors which earn them attention and responses. My reactions to the strong, bright, good qualities that they have will encourage them to grow in those ways–just as a seedling turns toward the light.

Their growth will be a happy side-effect, but it is not the point. My focus is on changing me, not them. I’ve been exactly backward in my thoughts lately. I was racing around a maze, trying to brick up all the dark alleys. Instead I should have been working on making the bright and beautiful paths easy to find and follow. I do that by traveling them myself. In the end my children must make their own choices. They will not always make the choices I wish they would. But I need to feed my trust in who they are so that I can watch and love without so much fear.

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